Share this:

In a PBS interview yesterday billed as America’s chance to speak directly to BP about the oil spill, Bob Dudley admitted that the oil giant’s response to the Gulf disaster has been far from perfect and said the
Dudley, who heads BP’s spill response following Tony Hayward’s missteps, took questions submitted via YouTube and Google and ranked in importance by Internet voters. People asked whether the spill dispersant BP is using is safe, questioned the company’s disaster response plans and criticized its claims process.
Dudley countered those questions by saying that since the deepwater accident was without precedent, BP had to learn on its feet:

We’re dealing with this as best we know how. We’re not making it up as we go along, because we have the absolute best engineering and science minds in the world working on this. It’s just a very unusual problem that we’ve never faced before.

The BP exec said the spill will irrevocably change the oil and gas industry not just in the Gulf, but around the world. In particular, he said blowout preventers will need a full redesign:

I believe that the industry will have no choice except to go through — re-engineer these to make them more failsafe. We have, with airplanes, with nuclear power plants — we have a standard of safety which people regard as failsafe, as they need to be. We just had an event now, that is going to make us re-evaluate the oil and gas industry globally, no question in my mind.

Dudley also took a minute to respond to “BP Spills Coffee,” the viral video parody that brings the spill response into an office conference room. The parody embarrassed employees, he said, because BP is a very proud company.
Here’s the full interview with NewsHour’s Ray Suarez. You can also read a transcript here.
<div align="center"

Share this:

No Comments yet

After watching all your efforts to contain the oil leak and not been able to; I have thought of a possible solution. I just don’t know how to go about sending it to you for your review.
I have made a crude drawing of the thing I came up with. Should you wish to check it out let me know where I can send it to and who to address it to.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
LeRoy.Lucero

“The parody embarrassed employees, he said, because BP is a very proud company.”
.
REALLY? A parody embarrassed employees? Does the oil spill not embarrass them???? GO HELP CLEANUP THIS DISASTER BP EMPLOYEES if that’s all you have to worry about is a F* parody.

We have read that the BP “company man” on the Deepwater Horizon had the authority to override the dissenting opinions from coworkers who felt that the drilling situation was no longer safe. We have read that he moved forward despite their concerns.In the future, it seems that perhaps it would be wise to revise the safety policy to give less power to the “company man.” He or she is “only human” and might be susceptible to error under some working conditions. It would seem desirable to have at least two people signing-off on the safety of the well — perhaps a representative of the rig owner as well. A deepwater rig with “kicks” that seem dangerous to anyone in a key position should be classified as “high risk” during the final stages of operation. Many of the company’s best people should lend their expertise to bringing a safe conclusion to the high-risk operation. Just my opinion.

BP has single-handedly put thousands of people out of work and out of business for who knows how long. I would say there are other things BP can be embarrassed about than a simple parody. Congratulations BP!

“In the future, it seems that perhaps it would be wise to revise the safety policy to give less power to the ‘company man.’”
PeachTea has hit the nail on the head. At Schlumberger, where I work, EVERY employee has the right to stop ANY procedure at ANY time if they feel it is unsafe. This safety policy needs to be the new industry standard.

BP is a dangerous company with incompetent leadership at all levels. The metric is the Texas City Refinery, the Alaska Pipeline Spill, and the Deepwater Horizon. The leadership team needs a major turnover or they need to get of the businesses that they don’t know.
We simply cannot afford another BP bad decision!

About Fuel Fix

FuelFix.com is your daily must-read source for news and analysis on the energy business. Anchored by business reporters at the Houston Chronicle and other Hearst newspapers, FuelFix incorporates blogs by energy experts, market updates, useful data and a real-time summary of the top ideas, hottest stories and latest news.